Taylor Swift released her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, on October 3, 2025, and was immediately faced with a surge of opinions from long-time fans and critical audiences. Despite mixed reactions, the album has achieved #1 on the Billboard 200 ranking and a record-breaking four million album sales within the first week of its drop. The album, which Swift began writing in 2024 while on the Eras tour in Sweden, features twelve songs and a collaboration with artist Sabrina Carpenter in the final song of the album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”
Unlike Swift’s previous albums, there seems to be a largely negative public opinion on The Life of a Showgirl. I, as well, believe that despite the album’s apparent success, it does not deserve the praise that numbers seem to give it.
As a whole, the album represents Taylor Swift’s success, in both her romantic life with her fiancé Travis Kelce, and in her journey in overcoming various “betrayals” from former friends and ex-lovers. These ideas have merged into an overall triumphant message that most of her former albums lacked. Its representation of Swift’s long-awaited happiness seems to be why long-time fans have enjoyed it thus far.
The album’s main theme of happiness is represented by the upbeat and soft-rock melody of the songs on it. It includes a lot less instrumentation and the addition of sharper and techno-like beats, but this isn’t something new from Swift. The albums released in recent years, like Lover and Reputation, have signified Swift’s gradual genre change from country to pop. In this album, Swift collaborated with Max Martin and Shellback, producers of various tracks on 1989 and Reputation, in order to return to writing catchy pop music.
I will state that the current genre Swift is in works for her, largely due to her continued use of string instruments in her songs. Instruments like the guitar have always paired well with her voice and lyricism, so even a lot less included in her songs, audiences can still find the music in this album to be catchy.
However, because of this, I believe Swift’s inclusion of “W$sh L$st” into the album was a bad decision. “W$sh L$st” is the 8th song on the album, with music composed of an upbeat-pop sound with bedroom-pop drums; different from most melodies Swift has produced. Without string instrumentals, the music is a lot harsher, and I find it does not fit Swift very well. It clashes with her voice and deviates from the style of the rest of the album. “W$sh L$st” is also one of the least listened to songs on the album, which seems to represent shared opinions among audiences.
However, despite the imperfect melodies of certain songs in the album, a majority of the melodies in The Life of a Showgirl are catchy. I would go so far as to say that they are the best part of the album, especially because the lyrics don’t contribute to its success.
The lyrics are the most heavily critiqued aspect of the album, and for good reason. Every song is filled with at least a few awkward phrases or current slang that, realistically, an artist of Swift’s caliber should not be using.
Some lyrics include “Did you girl-boss too close to the sun?” in “CANCELLED!” and “We all dressed up as wolves and we looked fire” in “Elizabeth Taylor.”
One might argue that ‘cringy’ lyrics such as these are out of touch and shouldn’t be used by any artist, but it especially feels awkward when someone like Swift uses them, who seems so far removed due to her age and unrelatable image.
The inclusion of such lyrics reflects negatively on the song as well. Typically, Swift’s lyrics are about things of significant meaning to her life or journey as an artist. By using overly informal lyricism, she effectively diminishes the value of the message the song would have had. “Eldest Daughter” is about the pressure of being a firstborn daughter and public figure, but Swift ruins the message when stating, “I’m not a bad b****, and this isn’t savage.”
Many people oppose the more raunchy lyrics she has incorporated as well, potentially due to their off-brandedness, as Swift has released almost entirely clean music throughout her career. The song “Wood” is the most explicit song she has ever written, about her fiancé Travis Kelsy and ‘making love’. “Father Figure” is another explicit song, in which she talks about having a bigger d*** than someone she dubs her ‘apprentice’. Both songs have received mixed opinions based on the content of the lyrics, especially since her audience is partly made up of children/teenagers.
At face value, The Life of a Showgirl album has both good and bad qualities. Most of the songs have been well-received because of the catchiness of the melody, but the lyrics have really held it back. Not by much, because this album has clearly been incredibly successful, but compared to former albums, The Life of a Showgirl has had very little relevance after the first few weeks of its release, especially on social media. This could be due to less marketing done to promote the album, but I believe it just shows that the album isn’t very good and is not strong enough to stand on its own.
However, who am I to say this? When analyzing these songs, I observed from the perspective of the general public and thought the album was disappointing. However, I might find more depth and meaning in her lyrics if I were a long-time fan, because I would be more capable of understanding what story Swift is trying to tell. This at least seems to be why many fans have enjoyed the album and defend it.
Therefore, I have concluded that for the general public, The Life of a Showgirl isn’t a good album. It clearly has its flaws, from the lyrics to the value of the songs themselves, but maybe that is simply because it appeals to her true fans, who understand her and her history and can appreciate the album for the story she wants to tell.
